


The First Night

by 14winters



Category: Elementary (TV)
Genre: Blood, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I'm still learning tagging I'm sorry, Minor Character Death, Nightmares, and gunshots, mentions of blood and death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-01
Updated: 2017-01-01
Packaged: 2018-09-14 00:42:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9149095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/14winters/pseuds/14winters
Summary: Joan wakes up from her first nightmare after her kidnapping. Sherlock is there.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by, what else, frustration with season 2. Particularly the empty space where acknowledging Joan's trauma over her kidnapping should've been. Mostly just an excuse to write Sherlock being in Joan's bed for the first time. (Sorry nothing nsfw happens - I'm as slowburn as they come. Also I'm stubbornly holding to my headcanon that they don't become non-platonic till season 4. -shrug-)
> 
> Also, as always, this is in my internal AU where Joan never slept with Mycroft kthxbye.

The gunshot rang out, and Joan felt the blood on her hands cooling like ice on her nerves. A voice echoed distantly. _Dr. Watson...Watson...Joan!_

She couldn't pinpoint the voice, it sounded like many people's voices mixed together. Her vision blurred, the face of the man on the table became unrecognizable. She reached out to close the eyes, still wide open in death. But her hands were still stained with blood.

She recoiled, and looking back at the dead man's face instead she saw Sherlock's, his brow knitted in a mix of anger and fear and other emotions she didn't want to think about.

I'm alright, she said, her voice quiet even to her own ears. She wanted to reach out and touch him, but an invisible force held her arms back. She struggled, trying to force her arms up, to no avail. She looked down. The blood dripped from her hands down to the concrete.

A darkness settled around her, and she could see nothing but shadows. I'm alright, she said, but her lips hadn't moved. She was no longer inside herself. Her perception of her own body was gone.

Now she saw only a man's body on a table, a dark bloody hole where his heart should be. A choking fear consumed her. She had no body to move, no mouth to speak. Then distantly she felt her consciousness struggling against that invisible force, the fear dragging her into an emptiness that made her forget everything but the fear. 

She pushed something away from her body, eyes she forgot she had opening to her dark room. In the brownstone. She blinked rapidly, focusing on the formless lumps of tangled sheets. Her heart pounded through her entire body, her limbs tingling, her hands trembling, blindly grasping for the comforter that had fallen halfway off the bed, leaving her body exposed to the cold night except for the sheet twisted around one calf. 

A looming presence behind her registered, and she turned her head sharply, a crick in her neck sounding in protest. A man stood over her. Sherlock. She couldn't make out his face, but his hands gave him away, as always. They were clenched tight at his sides, his right thumb moving restlessly over his knuckles.   
  
“Sherlock,” she said, the heavy syllables of his name falling from her mouth as reassuring as his presence. She blinked once, twice. He was still there. She was really awake.   
  
“H-how long have you been there?”

“A while.” The sharp intake of breath before he spoke revealed his stress. She then noticed his chest was heaving, as if he'd run a marathon.

She raised herself up on one elbow, her fist grasping the edge of the sheet. Her heartbeat still reverberated through her, making it more difficult than it should've been to form coherent words.

“Sit down,” she said, her free hand reaching out to his right, pulling at the sleeve of the hoodie he wore. He hesitated one beat, two, before slowly lowering himself to the edge of the bed, keeping the customary six inches of distance between them. She let him, even though every nerve in her was screaming to pull him closer, to let the only source of warmth and comfort in the room—in her life at that moment—share its body heat with hers. But her thoughts were too muddled and the sight of Sherlock's heavy breaths making his chest expand in an unnerving way made her hand withdraw from him.

He turned to look at her as her hand left his sleeve. “Are you alright?” She felt his eyes searching her face. His curiosity was clear in his voice, but the concern was stronger. 

“Yes,” she said immediately, automatically. Her voice was still hoarse with sleep. Her heartbeat was finally slowing. His body heat was radiating against her exposed skin, helping her reach her inner calm, her foundation.

“You cried out in your sleep,” he said, his eyes boring into her. She couldn’t see his face but she could feel it, demanding answers from her, answers she didn’t have. She looked away from him.

“I wanted to wake you but I—” His voice broke off with a suddenness that made the following silence deafening. Goosebumps rose on her arms. She couldn’t focus her gaze on anything, it was too dark.

The silence stretched. She tried to take a deep breath in, but it hitched, and her words came out broken, tired. Too quiet. “It's okay, Sherlock. I'm ok.”

Several more beats of silence passed in which neither of them moved. Sherlock's breathing slowed to normal. 

“You can go, Sherlock, you need sleep.” She still had to force the words out, trying to make her voice sound controlled. 

“I want to—” He cut himself off a second time. His body was eerily still. She couldn’t even sense movement from his hands, and somehow that made her more uneasy.

“To apologize. I'm so sorry Watson.”

Her heart jumped at the tears she could hear in his voice. The words dropped heavily between them. There was a pain out in the open now that neither of them knew how to express nor hide. She could feel it in the way he’d said her name.

 “I know Sherlock. Please, go to bed.” She let the words out with a sigh. There was nothing she could do. She couldn’t reach out to him. Something in her chest wouldn’t let her—like in her dream, an invisible force holding her back. She wanted to smash it to bits, but at the same time she felt protected by it.

“Would you—” He broke himself off again, and the following silence was all but painful this time.

Her heart seemed to jump into her throat. “What?” She kept her tone neutral.

“Would you like me to stay?”

Joan stopped breathing. For how long she couldn't tell. Her mind was blank.

He rose before she could speak. "I've made you uncomfortable."

The thing in her chest shook, and her hand lifted toward him. “No Sherlock! Wait. You can—you can stay.”

She couldn’t reach his sleeve this time; he’d stepped too far away. At her voice he stopped, his head bent down toward her. She saw him focus on the hand she was reaching out to him, a half-closed fist she was beginning to withdraw. Her heartbeat was all she heard. The cold of the room was getting to her, and she shivered. Her hand dropped to the mattress.

“You’re sure?” he said, something raw in his voice. It may have been the remnant of tears, or something else. Unable to see his expression, she didn’t want to guess.

“Yes. I…” Now it was she who was at a loss for words. It wasn’t even that the words weren’t there, she just couldn’t say them. _I want you to stay_.

“I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep at all, anyway,” she finished, trying to put a tone of dismissiveness in her voice. She fell back onto the pillow, tugging the sheet up from where it was tangled around her leg with visible irritation. It was an obvious attempt to hide her discomposure, but she knew Sherlock wouldn’t point that out. After getting the sheet disentangled from her leg, she spread it out in a semblance of neatness, tugging the comforter back onto the bed in the same motion. She could see the tightness in her movements, the agitation that she was having trouble holding back. But all she could hope was that the near complete darkness of her room was hiding it.

She heard more than saw him bounce once on the balls of his feet, before he stepped forward. He stopped right next to her mattress, and she heard the brief clunk and scuffle of him discarding his shoes. Just as he put one knee on the mattress, she pulled back the sheet and comforter for him, now having gotten them in some order so they could both adequately cover themselves.

Still keeping that six inches between them, Sherlock settled under the covers, fidgeted around for a few seconds, and then sitting up to take off his hoodie. He wore one of his t-shirts underneath, she couldn’t tell which one, but it was maybe a shade of red or orange. As he threw the hoodie toward the chair a few feet away, Joan pulled the comforter up over her stomach, folding her arms over it. She was still cold, but didn’t want to go completely under the covers either. She’d never had Sherlock in her bed before. The sensation was a little unnerving. But at the same time she knew she didn’t want him to leave.

After laying back down, Sherlock clasped his hands together over his stomach. Even after he settled and the room fell silent, a restlessness reverberated from him as if there were actually bees buzzing in her bedroom. It wasn’t something she could hear, she could just feel it from him. It occurred to her just then that he may have appeared in her dream—her nightmare—because she could feel his presence next to her. It seemed she could always feel him, though they seldom touched.

“Thank you,” she said after a few seconds, knowing she had to say something.

The next words struggled from her chest. “Do you want to know what the dream was?”

“Only if you want to tell me,” he said, his voice a bit softer than before. He was no longer tightly clasping his fingers, but had one hand laid over the other, with a couple fingers tapping against the top of his hand quietly. The sight of that small movement soothed her.

“You were on the table. The table where they shot him,” she said, the words coming out more evenly than she expected them to. Sherlock’s fingers continued tapping. She took a silent breath, shuddering inside that she could still remember the entire dream.

“But you were alive. And angry, and…” She bit her lip, not know how to phrase her next words, her thoughts too muddled to make the images flashing through any clearer. A familiar fear was returning, but she ignored it and pushed the words out. “It was just me and you in the dream, and I wanted to reach out to you, but I couldn’t.”

Her heart was beating too hard again. She scowled up into the darkness, trying to control her body’s responses. It _had_ been a dream. But Sherlock’s expression had been so familiar, so tangible. Because she had seen it recently.

“I know it doesn’t mean anything,” she said, her dismissive tone coming out easier this time. “The memories are fresh though, so I guess my mind is just…” She made a small sweeping motion with one hand. “Processing them.”

He hummed in response. He was thoughtful, yet tense. She could hear it. But he didn’t say anything.

She was wide awake—but she didn’t want to get up. She could tell by the thick darkness outside that it wasn’t anywhere close to dawn. She was not getting up now.

“Do you remember your dreams?” she said, simply curious. And to get him to talk. She needed to talk about something. The last thing she needed right now was silence.

“Seldom,” he said. He was mulling over something, holding something inside. She waited.

“Watson, do you find physical intimacy comforting?”

Her body froze in shock. She could detect no mockery in his tone. He honestly wanted to know.

“I…well, yes, sometimes. It-it depends on the…person.” Her words stumbled over each other. She could feel her face heating.

“From what I can recall, you have not been physically intimate with a man for approximately...” He was actually _thinking about it_. “Five months.”

“That has got nothing to do with what you’re asking!” she said, almost yelling. Her hands moved to her sides, unconsciously becoming fists. She did have a strong urge to punch him now. The semi-darkness of her room was making her feel bolder than she might have otherwise.

“Aren’t you aware that touching someone can be about more than sex?” she added, letting her exasperation show. A small part of her was incredulous her night had gone from a nightmare to this. 

“I was getting to a point, Watson,” Sherlock said, perfectly calm. She glared at him, knowing he couldn’t see it.

“I was about to say, you do not tend to go to others for comfort. The only physical intimacy I have noticed you initiate is sexual intimacy with a man. I admit I could’ve phrased my question better—do you seek out physical intimacy for comfort or only for carnal reasons?”

“Oh my god, I can’t believe you’re asking me this,” she said, laughter edging into her words.

“Would you rather I leave?” She detected the sensitivity in his tone. He was being infuriatingly calm.

“Sher—no, I don’t want you to leave.” Her thoughts became muddled again, and she could finally feel sleep tugging at her. But her mind was racing, too many memories and feelings running through her body in a mockery of adrenaline.

Suddenly an image, so vivid and visceral, returned to her mind’s eye and she balked. The blood on her hands, the hole where a heart should be, that darkness closing in. She sat up.

Sherlock’s eyes were sharp on her face. He couldn’t see her expression well, but he had to sense her sudden—different—agitation all the same.

The image wouldn’t go away. She closed her eyes tight, as if that would force the image out.

“Watson?”

“I keep thinking of his wound. How fruitless it all was,” she said, frustrated at the emotion in her voice. She wasn’t the type to lash out, but now she felt like she could throw something. Her hands fisted into the comforter, the yielding softness doing nothing to bank her anger and grief.

Then she felt a warmth settle hesitantly over her left hand. It was Sherlock. His hand barely closed over her clenched fist, but after a couple heartbeats she turned her palm up to clasp his hand tightly in hers.

Only then did she notice her rapid breathing. She fought to slow it down, focusing on the solid heat of Sherlock’s hand in hers. A few seconds passed, and though the images of the blood and the sound of the gunshots were still present, they were faded around the edges, sinking to the back of her awareness.

She realized how tightly she was holding Sherlock’s hand, and loosened her grip, giving him a chance to withdraw. He didn’t.

“I’ll be alright,” she said, the words coming out without forethought. They sounded automatic, robotic even. But she wanted to say them. It seemed like she should.

“I know.” Sherlock’s reply rested in the darkness between them, a calm in his voice, a self-assurance that was familiar. She didn’t mistake his pride in her for false confidence. He _knew_ she would be alright. Just not now.

She lay back down, shrinking the distance between them by a few inches. She still held his hand, a part of her hoping he wouldn’t want to let go. She told herself she would be able to feel if he wanted to distance himself from her. That she would feel if he wanted to let go, even without him saying anything, even without seeing his face.

Thinking this, she closed the distance between them, letting her shoulder and arm touch his. His pulse against her wrist quickened, but his hand remained steady. She could smell the aftershave he wore, even the toothpaste he’d so recently used. It was all familiar, but sharper somehow, as if the darkness and the location were giving a new dimension to her awareness of him. The sunlight that would eventually cut through her curtains in a few hours’ time would take that away. She knew that as well as she knew she’d broken some rule by accepting his offer to stay.

“I’m going to try to sleep. Will you?” she asked, her voice almost a whisper. His pulse against her wrist was keeping her focused, focused away from the memories, the last images of her nightmare clinging to her consciousness. She found herself watching the rise and fall of his chest, reassuring in its constancy. Watched the rate of his breathing change slightly as he prepared to speak.

“I may doze off for a bit. Haven’t slept in nearly 80 hours,” he said, his nonchalance not the least bit feigned. She sighed inwardly.

“Try to sleep. For me,” she said, squeezing his hand, only for a second.

His head turned toward her. Somehow he was studying her features, though he couldn’t be able to see much. She stared back, wishing not for the first time she could see as well as he did.

“I’ll try,” he said, his breath soft against her face. She nodded, letting herself relax into the mattress. She rested her head close to his, her hair brushing against his face.

He didn’t let go of her hand, and as she felt sleep pull her down, his pulse began to match hers.


End file.
